Pulled back a little and swung round to the left and I struck gold by placing a tree into the scene
As a much stronger element than the planter, its silhouette provides a balance to the bandstand on the right hand side of the frame.
Everything else I was looking for in the earlier photos was there, the placement of elements on thirds lines, the light was on the primary subject, with the surrounding tones all green or dark. The path leads the eye nicely into the scene. Handy figures sitting on a bench to the left of the tree in just the right place for your eye to discover them once you've taken everything else in.
Once I had the image in Lightroom I tightened up the crop from 4 x 3 to 8.5 x 11 to take out an extraneous planter on the left hand side
Here's a diagram of the main compositional elements.
The red lines are the thirds grid. You can see how the tree and central axis of the bandstand fall on the vertical lines, while the lower of the horizontal lines is traced by the tree/path interface and the upper one bounds both the top of the bandstand and marks the start of the turn of the tree trunk toward the upper left hand corner of the frame.
The yellow square shows the bounds of a frame within the frame bounded by right edge of the frame, the tree trunk, its canopy and its shadow on the ground. The bandstand occupies that nicely, like a picture within a picture.
I think there's a further symmetry provided by the tree branch in the top left and the path in the bottom right both leading diagonals in from their corners of the frame, indicated by the blue lines.
A little final polish to bring out some texture on the tree trunk and tweak the contrast and we have the final result.
Southwark Park Bandstand by
cybertect, on Flickr
Final note: While I am pretty happy with it, I'm not going to claim this is a compositional masterpiece.
The purpose of this piece is more to lead you through the way I'm thinking as I'm working a subject, looking for opportunities, discarding some ideas and attempting to create a synthesis of everything that seemed to work within a cohesive framework.